The Other Ambulance
by gloryblastit
Summary: Dallas' thoughts and observations in the other ambulance with Johnny.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**: This is dedicated to Scarlett7, my cherished reviewer, who gave me the idea. I hope you like it.

He pulled Johnny from the fire but maybe too late. He was burned badly and he had been screaming but not anymore. He was unconscious, silent.

'Johnny, no,' Dallas thought, his thought his voice inside his head.

Ponyboy was okay, unconscious as well, but he'd come around. He'd pulled them both out but only one would make it, he knew. He knew because he knew, he'd never seen anyone as badly hurt as Johnny was now, not anyone who lived. Maybe he was dead already.

But he still breathed. Dallas saw the rise and fall of his chest, saw how his jacket and shirt had been burned through to his skin, which was raw and red across his shoulders, on his neck.

The ambulances and firetrucks screamed to the edge of the church, and a sort of numbness came over Dallas. Things didn't seem quite real anymore. Ponyboy lay in the grass, his face covered with ash, his hair oddly white in comparison. And Johnny. Frightening in his quietness and his stillness.

It reminded him of when they found Johnny in the lot after the socs beat him up, his face cut up and bruised and swollen, the wide gash from temple to cheekbone.

In New York's west side he'd thought he'd figured out who he was. He could stomach all the knife fights, gun fights, chain and lead pipe fights. All the blood, the unreasoning violence, it hadn't fazed him. Even the danger he'd been in from drug addicts with a debt and no hope left, a gun leveled at him in a shaky, grimy hand. All the high rise tenement slums boxing him in, trapping him, he hadn't cared. 'Pull the trigger, chicken shit,' he'd say.

He comes back from that to sleepy little Tulsa, to his friends, just small time punks. The heroin and cocaine hadn't come here yet, hadn't hit as heavy as in New York, but it didn't matter. He'd seen people worse than Johnny was in the lot, he'd seen people with their brains splattered on the wall behind them, he'd seen drug addicts with open sores, maggots in their wounds, shooting up under their tongues or between their toes because those were the only veins left.

But it wasn't that. It was something he'd had trouble explaining even in his own head. Johnny made him feel like things maybe weren't so hopeless, like he wasn't so hopeless.

He didn't know what he'd do without Johnny.

The ambulance workers lifted Pony on a stretcher into the back of the ambulance. But not Johnny, not yet. He had to be stabilized in the field.

Dallas sat near Johnny, guarding him like some vicious silver eyed cat, his arms wrapped around his knees, the wind catching the ends of his white blond hair.

They cut Johnny's clothes off with tiny silver scissors and covered the burns with ointment and gauze. Took vital signs, put the oxygen tubing under his nose. Nodded at each other and lifted him into the ambulance. Then they came to him.

"Hurt, buddy?" An EMT said gently, looking at the burnt sleeve of Dallas' jacket. Dallas blinked and looked himself. He hadn't seen it, hadn't felt it.

"I don't know,"

"Okay. C'mon. Come with us," and he lead Dallas into the ambulance, had him lay on the stretcher next to Johnny.

While they treated his arm he watched Johnny, his face still, the oxygen thing making him look sick. He couldn't look at the burns on his shoulders and his neck, cringed and looked away like he did in the lot that day.

'Aw shit Johnny please don't die' Dallas thought, his thought his voice, raw and pleading, 'please,'


	2. Chapter 2

It was dark outside. The ambulances screamed toward Tulsa, toward the city, a hospital.

And guilt began to make its tiny stabs at his flesh, he'd sent Johnny there, after all. Sent him to that church. But the other part of his mind screamed back, "I was only trying to help!"

A lot of help he was. Johnny's breathing had become more labored and the EMT was scrambling, checking vital signs, adjusting the knob on the oxygen tank, starting I.V.s.

Dallas could feel every bump in the road, could hear the sirens slicing through his head.

In all his adventures he'd never been in an ambulance before. Once or twice he was brought to the hospital for injuries from fights, once in a cop car and once in Shepard's car.

"Aw, shit, kid," the EMT said, staring at Johnny. Dallas could see that Johnny's fingernails and lips were blue, and the informal way the EMT said it, "aw, shit, kid," that had Dallas worried, too.

The EMT, who was probably no more than five years older than Dallas and Johnny, whipped the oxygen mask Johnny wore aside and clamped his lips down on Johnny's. Rescue breathing. Dallas watched in horrid fascination. After an excruciating couple of seconds Johnny began to breathe again and the EMT wiped his brow with his sleeve, and Dallas saw such agonized relief in his eyes. He gently placed the oxygen mask over Johnny's nose and mouth.

"Hey, Carl," he called breathlessly to the other EMT, the driver, "hurry it up or we're gonna lose this one!"

Carl turned around briefly, then turned back to the road and floored it.

"Well, that goddamn church is out in east bumfuck!" Carl called back.

Johnny took a gasping breath and the EMT turned back fearfully, but it was just one gasp and his breathing evened out.

Oh Christ, Dallas thought, he's gonna die right here. Dally sat up and watched Johnny breathe, and before he could help it the question was out of his mouth.

"Is he gonna die?"

"He'll make it," the EMT said grimly, and Dally saw the sheer force of his will and wondered how anyone could do that job. Then he turned his attention fully to Johnny.

The short black hair, Dally had never seen it that short, didn't think it had been that short in years. His fingernails, still bluish, bitten to the bloody quick. A nervous habit. Johnny had always knawed on his nails. His hands were crossed over his chest, disturbingly like the positioning of a corpse in the casket.

Through the front window Dally could see the other ambulance, the one that had Ponyboy. Ponyboy would be fine. Maybe smoke inhalation, maybe some first degree burns. He'd be upset if Ponyboy wasn't okay, if he was worse than he seemed. He'd sent them to that church just as much to protect Ponyboy as Johnny. Because those two needed protecting, and Dally understood that. They were innocent in a way that the rest of them weren't.

Tulsa was further by car than train, even screaming ambulance. And the headache began to pound with its insistence, and guilt pounded right alongside it. There was no getting around it. He'd sent them there. Now look what happened.


End file.
